Micromanaging your holiday . . . .

[elliecjno1]

Really interesting to hear all you thoughts

We went as a group of 5 last time & the busy day guide was fantastic as we knew where we were going each day & it avoided any early morning debates I'm just glad there's only the 2 of us this time so we can switch stuff about & change it as I can imagine if it were 5 again it'd be hard work.

I'm working on Wednesday day & have given him my MDE login & briefed him what FP's to go for first etc

[sha9]

Originally Posted by elliecjno1

Really interesting to hear all you thoughts

We went as a group of 5 last time & the busy day guide was fantastic as we knew where we were going each day & it avoided any early morning debates I'm just glad there's only the 2 of us this time so we can switch stuff about & change it as I can imagine if it were 5 again it'd be hard work.

I'm working on Wednesday day & have given him my MDE login & briefed him what FP's to go for first etc

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There’s only two of us and it’s not so much “debates” it’s more indecision! “What do you want to do today?” “I don’t know, what do you want to do?”. And so on. We missed so much of morning EMH one day there was no point in bothering because we didn’t have a reason to have to be in the park for a certain time. ADRs help us eat decent food too as there’s then no indecision about meals. I remember a year when we still stayed offsite when we had sandwiches from Walgreen for dinner because we couldn’t decide/agree on where to go for dinner! Another trip where we walked the whole of World Showcase unable to decide on a restaurant. Granted our party size was bigger then but even with just two of us having the holiday pre planned is so much better for us than winging it.

[Kidd McFluff]

We went last Easter and loved the fp system, didn’t queue for anything despite it being really busy, felt like vips. Did bump into a fellow brit who’d booked nothing, thinking she had to be there to get fp, poor thing had struggled to ride anything and was really disappointed.
I am finding booking adrs tricky, trying to judge how jet lagged we’ll be for how long. But I don’t see another system being any better.
Definitely found dlp with paper fp more stressful (had a great time though)

[captain-codeye]

The first time we went 9 years ago I didn’t plan anything, we went for 4 weeks and got the the tickets, it was jan so we managed everything as crowds were non existent.

We still go for 4 weeks at a time so can take things at a slower pace, for example I have decided we’re not getting universal tickets after all for this years trip as it’s still enough with Disney, sea world, bush, legoland and discovery cove.

We know we will hit Disney hard for the first 2 weeks as the crowds will be too much for us from the 3rd week in December. I will have booked fast passes and will know what park to vist obviously in advance, if we decide to go on that day that’s where we will go, if we want to stay in we will!

For the next two weeks we will play things by ear, if we fancy going to a park we will but we will have more rest days than active days, Like Tom said, this is supposed to be a holiday!

[Shroom]

My OH found he felt it would be a military operation when I was briefing him on the FPs and ADRs that I had booked.

We were there for 7 nights in November and I had pre planned most of it by May, just waiting for booking days to open.

I planned which parks to go to using the busy day guide on here, then I only ever booked FPs for morning, afternoon or evening, never all three. That way we still had some flexibility of what to do for the rest of the day but didn’t waste time in queues.

If you try to wing it without FPs, with the popularity of the parks now you’d spend your holiday queuing which is what I wanted to avoid.

We both found it was a relaxing holiday even with some FPs thrown in.

I also only booked one ADR per day, never more than that so we weren’t as set by those times either.

[suehen]

We do a plan for fast passes but ours can change and does we stay on-site but now its just me and DH I have loose plan. Last year was one of the few times I only changed our fast passes for one day and that was Epcot we arrived at 4.00 pm it was rammed after 30 minutes I said to DH do you want to say or go to HS I cancelled all 3 of fast pass's for Epcot on the boat I said I will see whats available we hit lucky got ToT, TSM and Star tours even got 4th and 5th one for GMR, Muppets and really enjoyed our evening I know for a fact I would not of enjoyed Epcot that evening, we tend to do different parks each day we only do about 4 hours in the morning then a different park in the evening. Also there is usually 2 days at least with no plan they are get up the morning and decide what we are doing. I will say that last year was the 1st year I think I cracked the fast pass I booked them for the evenings and went along the guide of wait times and booked the ride with longest wait times and what we wanted to do. You can plan as much or as little the thing to remember its a holiday, enjoy it and if you find like us that somewhere is to packed and not enjoying it change it, its a lot of money spend we tend to go with the flow.

[TC Devon]

This is our second trip. We stay off site. The first one we knew which park we were going to on which days. We used busy park guides. We ve done the same this time. My husband booked fp last time but timings meant a lot of sprinting from one side of park to the other. Tricky with two little ones.
This time we go in August and I know it will be busy. I will have to fp rides. My daughter has asd and adhd traits-she’s a runner. She also needs to know what she’s going on and what’s it like. Plenty of you tube videos and talking it through. Long queues will be hard, the children are not thrill seekers! If we want to go on grown up rides we need to fp those as well. How the hell fo you use three fp in the day to please everyone. I’m so confused and actually it is stressing me out! This holiday is costing us all our savings and the pressure for it to be perfect is getting to me.

[Dissuziq]

I am normally a last minute organiser, but last year I did book FP and some evening dinner bookings we really wanted to try like be our Guest. But also, while we were there I also did a night before shuffle with both dining and FP, I think a few people change there plans at last minute but managed to get a mine train FP and dining at Be our guest after we loved the lunch we wanted to eat again, also we checked out places like Trails end that turned out to be lovely.

Guess I'm a mixture of planner and go with the flow

[kellsbells]

I am guilty of planning to the extreme! I love it and it's part of the holiday for me, there are spreadsheets and lists and laminated timetables by the time I'm done!

However, it never feels rigid when we are there. It's a plan that we can choose to follow or not depending on what we feel like. If I'm having fun doing one thing I don't drop it to rush to a FP and if we are a bit late or early to an adr then so be it. For me it's about making sure we can do the things we want and saving time so instead of being in a queue we use that time to do whatever we feel like.

My family are really not interested in the planning and they just let me get on with it. The first time I got them to pre-order food for BOG I'm sure they thought I was crazy but when they saw the line for people who hadn't pre-ordered I definitely got a thank you!

I think the one downside of it all for me is that I do feel a bit tied to my phone at times but I try to do any FP switching/booking whilst in another queue to minimise it.

[sha9]

Originally Posted by kellsbells

I think the one downside of it all for me is that I do feel a bit tied to my phone at times but I try to do any FP switching/booking whilst in another queue to minimise it.

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I worried about this last year but like you tried to only look for FP/ADRs while in queues so I didn’t spend park time glued to my phone.